I just returned from the West Coast where I conceived and delivered a new crash course workshop on change management.

It started with a call from Jose, a business leader in Southern California  who’d learned of our work integrating the cultural and technical aspects of lean transformations. He wanted help launching lean six sigma with his leadership team and employees. Last week was my only available four day window–day out, day back, two days at the client site.

Jose loaded me up with emails covering every conceivable aspect of his company. Everything I needed to get up the learning curve on the long ride out.  

I used day one to get to know the leaders, conduct a few focus groups with employees and tour the operation. That plus the advance reading gave me what I needed to understand the climate and culture, performance opportunities and likely barriers to achieving them.    

For the next two days we plowed through change management fundamentals and then the advanced course: defining the future condition; identifying the requisite leadership roles and expectations; creating a plan to eliminate root causes of performance problems related to on-time delivery, quality and operating income; building the framework of a continuous improvement process; and prioritizing what work needs to stay on the plate and what must go. 

All in two days!

It worked because the leadership team was business-savvy, enthusiastic, used to doing hard work fast and, of course, (here comes the self-serving part) the content was exceptional.

The team has plenty to work on. We’ll check in at regular intervals for what Jose referred to as “sanity checks.” 

Good work, happy client, nice ride home.